Columbia-based Bandura Cyber raises $10 million in venture funding

Bandura Cyber, a Columbia-based cybersecurity firm, has expanded its first significant funding round to more than $10 million, the company announced Wednesday morning.

The so-called Series A funding round was led by New York venture capital firm Tenfore Holdings, and other investors included Grotech Ventures, Cultivation Capital and Gula Tech Adventures, the early stage investment firm of Ron Gula, co-founder and former CEO of Tenable, and his wife Cyndi Gula, a former Tenable executive.

The investments will help Bandura Cyber further development its cyber security products and boost its marketing and sales efforts in the financial services, health care, energy and government sectors, according to the company.

Joyce Shen, investment director and operating partner of Tenfore Holdings, will join Bandura Cyber’s board of directors as part of the round.

In August, Bandura Cyber announced it raised $4 million through its initial Series A funding round. The company, which also has offices in St. Louis, said it raised $3.5 million in seed funding last year.

Founded in 2014, Bandura Cyber pioneered “threat intelligence gateways,” which improve firewalls to detect and block threats to computer networks.

“We are grateful for the support of our investors and the opportunity to deliver the power of automated threat intelligence to organizations of all sizes to block known threats at massive scale,” Bandura Cyber CEO Chris Fedde said in a statement. “Tens of millions of known malicious IP addresses and domains are attacking organizations daily. Bandura Cyber provides organizations the ability to use threat intelligence to proactively prevent these threats from burdening network defenses and staff resources.”